


bird's eye

by Snickfic



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Aftermath, F/M, Holding Hands, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:36:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27152570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: Mako had a beer in her hand like he did; like his, it was was still half-full. She climbed up and sat next to him on the table. “What will you do next?”
Relationships: Raleigh Becket/Mako Mori
Comments: 12
Kudos: 40
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	bird's eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



This place would be empty tomorrow, Raleigh thought. It felt almost empty now, despite the noise of celebration all around him. Not a single Jaeger remained in the Shatterdome. The mechanics had nothing to put their hands to. Tendo’s nerve center was up there in the rafters, most of the electronics probably still running because everyone was too busy to turn them off: a brain without a body.

Not that Tendo sounded at all unhappy about that. Raleigh could hear him singing a ways down the table. He’d know Tendo’s singing anywhere.

“You’re too sober,” said some guy that Raleigh had definitely seen around. He pushed a bottle into Raleigh’s hand. “You’re the hero of the hour, man. Drink up.”

Obligingly Raleigh popped the cap off and took a swig. The guy saluted and wandered off again.

Raleigh tipped his head back and looked up—and up, and up. It was one of those facts of human nature: nobody ever looked up. Somehow, the ceiling seemed a lot farther away now than it ever had when there was a Jaeger below. Someone had turned off a lot of the upper lighting, and now angular shadows were all that was visible of yesterday’s struts and catwalks.

“What are you looking at?” someone asked, with careful, deliberate pronunciation.

Raleigh smiled without even meaning to. It just seemed to happen around Mako. “Uh, nothing. I don’t know. Just thinking.”

Mako nodded. She had a beer in her hand like he did; like his, it was was still half-full. She climbed up and sat next to him on the table. “What will you do tomorrow?”

“Well, you and I both are going to go shake a bunch of politicians’ hands, I guess.” He and Mako had just escaped having to do that tonight, now. The reprieve had been Tendo’s doing, Raleigh suspected. “Let ‘em take pictures with us, hope a little of our heroic shine rubs off on ‘em.”

Another person might’ve missed her smile, but Raleigh had gotten in the habit of watching Mako pretty closely, so he saw the lift at the corners, the softening around her eyes. “You have had lots of practice,” she said.

“I mean, it’s all bullshit, but you gotta do it.”

Mako nodded at this dubiously sage wisdom. “But after that, what will you do?”

“Well—” Raleigh began, and then stopped. After the gladhanding, then—what? He laughed, bewildered. “I don’t know.” No wall to build. No Jaeger to pilot. 

“What did you do before?”

“Uh, still construction, actually. Me and Yancey were running our dad’s business. That’s all long gone, though. What about you? What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Mako took a sip of her beer and grimaced. Flat, Raleigh guessed, or warm, or both.

Down the way, one of the mechanics was standing on a table, acting out a Jaeger-Kaiju battle while her audience shouted commentary. Farther yet, Raleigh caught glimpses of that weirdo Newt holding court. Raleigh hadn’t gotten around to figuring out just what contribution Newt had made, but he must have done something to draw that kind of crowd.

They were all finding relief in their own way. The shouting and laughing, that was the sound of years of horror, months of panic leaking slowly away, like air hissing from a balloon. Raleigh looked at Mako, frowning at the rim of her bottle. “I don’t want to be here right now,” Raleigh said. “Do you?”

Mako considered that for a momet, her brow still creased. At last she shook her head. “No.”

They end up high in the scaffolding. It was the same place they took their lunch trays to less than a week ago, although that humiliating day seemed almost infinitely distant now, on the other side of a chasm. This time Mako grabbed a flashlight from a workbench they passed, and they climbed by its beam up into the dark, beyond the sounds of celebration, out of the reach of its light.

They were more alone there, hundreds of feet above the ground, than they’d ever been even in the Jaeger. There was no Tendo in their ear now, giving updates or relaying orders. There were no more monsters to face, no more Rift—at least, none at the bottom of the ocean. Now that Mako had brought it up, the future seemed like its own kind of Rift, a chasm for Raleigh to fall into if he weren’t careful.

He felt weightless, like that moment when the Jaeger head when it dropped towards its body, just before impact. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said, as if he hadn’t already said exactly that thing ten minutes ago.

A small, cool hand folded over his. He gripped it before he could think better of it. You couldn’t afford to second guess in the Drift. Overthinking only led you down the rabbit hole. “I don’t know either,” Mako said, like she was still there in the Drift with him. Like it was still the two of them in one body, lurching into the future.


End file.
